MIAMI, April 8 (UPI) -- A poll released Thursday indicates Florida residents are evenly split on whether Terri Schiavo of Tampa, Fla., should have been kept alive last year.
The Mason-Dixon poll conducted for the Orlando Sentinel and WESH-TV, Orlando, produced a deadlock on the issue at 41-41 percent on whether her feeding tube should have been removed in October.
That is when Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature stepped in and ordered the feeding tube restored for the 41-year-old woman who has been in a permanent vegetative state since collapsing from a potassium imbalance 14 years ago.
"Around the time this happened, polls showed more people opposed the governor and Legislature for stepping in and overriding the courts," said University of Florida bioethics professor Bill Allen.
"But since then, the governor has won a few procedural victories in court. Maybe that's shaping thinking now," he said.
The poll was conducted among 625 likely voters March 30-April 1 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. The margin of error is 4 percent.
